Notifications & Email Preferences
Use the in-app notifications inbox and configure which emails VitalSentinel sends you, with tips for keeping your alert volume manageable.
VitalSentinel keeps you informed in two places: the in-app notifications inbox and your email preferences. This page covers both.
In-App Notifications Inbox
The notifications inbox lives at /dashboard/notifications and is accessible from the bell icon in the top navigation bar. Anything that needs your attention - alert triggers, billing events, system announcements, welcome messages - lands here.
Notification Types
| Type | What it means |
|---|---|
| Alert | An alert rule you configured has triggered |
| System | Operational status, planned maintenance, or other system events |
| Announcement | New features and product updates |
| Billing | Subscription, payment, and plan changes |
| Welcome | Onboarding messages when you join |
Severities
Each notification carries a severity that controls its color:
- Info - general information, no action required
- Success - something completed successfully
- Warning - something that may need attention
- Critical - something that needs attention now
Tabs
The inbox has two tabs:
- Unread (default) - only items you haven't read yet
- All - everything, including read items
Grouping
You can switch the display between a flat list and one grouped by domain. Grouping is useful if you manage many domains and want to see at a glance which sites have outstanding notifications.
Marking as Read
- Click any notification to open its details. It's marked as read automatically.
- Use the envelope icon to Mark as read without opening, or to Mark as unread afterwards.
- Use Mark all read to clear the unread count in one action.
Deleting
Delete individual notifications you no longer need with the trash icon. Deleted notifications cannot be recovered.
Unread Count Badge
The bell icon in the top navigation bar shows a badge with your unread count (it caps at 9+). The count updates in real time as you read or delete items.
Email Preferences
Some notifications also send email. Email behavior is configured in a few places:
Per-Alert Email Toggle
Each alert rule has its own Email notification toggle. See Alert Notifications for details on what email alerts include and how to configure them.
Product and Onboarding Emails
Settings → Notifications → Product and onboarding emails (/dashboard/settings/notifications) holds a Send me product and onboarding emails switch. It covers the short getting-started series sent after you sign up, plus occasional product guidance, and turning it off stops the series straight away.
Every email in that series also carries an unsubscribe link in its footer. That link works without signing in, and it turns off both the onboarding series and the newsletter. Account, security, and billing emails are never affected.
Alert Emails by Module
Settings → Notifications → Alert emails by module has one switch for each monitoring module. The switch controls if that module can send you alert emails. Alerts always appear in your notification bell.
An alert email needs two settings:
- The Email notification option of the alert rule is on.
- The switch of the module is on in Alert emails by module.
There are switches for Uptime Monitoring, RUM Monitoring, CrUX Monitoring, Synthetic Monitoring, Robots.txt Monitoring, Indexing Monitoring, Google Search Console, Web Analytics, Server Log Monitoring, Page Monitoring, Site Health Monitoring and Sitemap Monitoring.
If you turn off Page Monitoring, Site Health Monitoring or Sitemap Monitoring, that module is also removed from your change digest and your weekly summary.
Page and Site Change Digest
The Page and site change digest is a summary of what changed on the pages you watch in Page Monitoring and across your sites in Site Health Monitoring. Urgent problems still reach you through alert rules.
Select how often you get the digest in Settings → Notifications → Page and site change digest:
| Option | What you get |
|---|---|
| Off | No change digest emails. Sitemap Monitoring is also removed from your weekly summary. Alerts and the change feed do not change. |
| Daily | One email each day at 07:00 UTC with the changes and issues of the last day. Sitemap Monitoring is not in this email, and it is also removed from your weekly summary. |
| Weekly (default) | One email each week with the changes and issues of the last seven days. |
Below the options, each domain has a switch next to its name. Turn off the switch to remove that domain from the digest. When the digest is Off, these switches are not available.
Weekly Domain Reports
VitalSentinel can send a weekly email summary for each domain you have access to. Reports go out every Monday and include the past week's headline metrics.
Configure them in Settings → Notifications → Weekly domain reports (/dashboard/settings/notifications):
- Open your account Settings, then click Notifications.
- Scroll to the Weekly domain reports section.
- Toggle each domain on or off individually.
The per-domain toggles appear once you have at least one domain; until then this section shows an empty state. Weekly reports are on by default for every domain (opt-out): a master toggle turns them all off, and each domain has its own switch. Preferences are per user, so team members can subscribe or unsubscribe independently.
Tips
- Use Unread as your inbox. Treat the Unread tab like an email inbox - read or dismiss items, then move on.
- Group by domain when triaging incidents. It's the fastest way to see which sites have multiple things going wrong at once.
- Keep weekly reports on for client domains. They double as a low-effort weekly check-in for your stakeholders.
